Quiz | Test Your New Years Knowledge

Before you pop open the champagne and get ready to plant a big sloppy kiss on the target of your choice, you might want to stop and ask yourself, "What Do I Really Know About New Years?"

I mean, before you start warbling Auld Lang Syne off key, maybe you should put yourself to the test and see where you stand.

Take my New Years quiz is what I'm saying! (Do you dare?) Good luck, and have fun.

Did you take the quiz? How did you do? Did you learn something fun? Sure you did.

When the clock strikes midnight, signalling the start of the new year, people run around kissing as many people as they can find. Why is this?

There are various explanations for the custom of the New Years Kiss.

The ancient Roman festival of Saturnalia with its connections to the Winter Solstice is the first record we have of kissing at the start of the new year.

According to legends from England and Germany, the custom of the kiss is meant to ward off a year of loneliness. The year's outlook would be determined by the nature of the kiss. If you kissed someone wonderful or loved, you would have a great year. If you kissed someone not to special, your year to come would be mediocre.

But perhaps my favorite version of the New Years kiss stems back to the early Romans. Julius Caesar changed New Years Day from the spring equinox to January 1 to honour the god Janus. The January 1 celebrations were excesses of drunken debauchery, of which kissing was only one small aspect.

Typically, the mention of New Years Resolutions causes some good folk to assure you that they never make New Years Resolutions because it is pointless and only sets them up to fail.

Okay. Acknowledged. But where did the tradition come from?

In the Kissing Tradition described above, it mentions that the early Romans celebrated New Years with much debauchery. A family friendly activity it wasn't.

Sometime during this era, Rome adopted Christianity as the official religion. Christians began rejecting the revelry associated with New Years and began using it as a time for moral reflection and for setting goals to betterment in the future.

Time passed, and the Puritans in New England carried further the custom of rejecting the pagan celebration honouring the god Janus (New Years Day, in other words), and saw it as a time for moral reviews and intentions.

This tradition continued on, in a "watered down" fashion, to the currently popular New Years resolutions typically involving the loss of ten pounds, regular workouts at the gym, getting out of debt and finding a new and better boyfriend or girlfriend.

Check out the video below for a short overview of the history of New Years Resolutions.